there is no beginning
by dress without sleeves
Summary: Clint does not become; Clint is not, and then Clint is.


there is no beginning

In the circus, a hoop diver must jump through rings stacked one on top of the other, impossibly high_._ Clint's parents are dead, and his brother has hungry eyes over a knife-tip collarbone, so he jumps. He wrecks his insides and re-forges them, this time fearless, this time ready. He asks, "Do you know what it's like to be unmade?" but what he means is, _this time I didn't do the unmaking._

_.x._

They are too young, at first, to join the act, so Clint and Barney haul materials out of the trucks and wrestle lions into their cages. Barney is not always strong enough. Neither is Clint, but Clint must be, so he is. He keeps his eyes open. Pain is fear leaving the body.

He grows strong. They say that this is the beginning; it is not, because there is no beginning.

.x.

Jacques teaches him the sword, and Chisholm the bow, but what Clint really learns is how to run across wires and fall from great heights. What Clint really learns is how to fold himself so that he is invincible. What Clint really learns is how to pick pockets, and how not to get _caught_.

When he walks in on Jacques counting money, he does not feel betrayed. In the circus, it is the Monsieur Loyal's job to distract, entertain, mislead, and Jacques has always been the best. But Clint's parents are dead, and Bernard is still hungry, so when the Swordsman whispers _join me,_ Clint whispers back, _no._ That is all, and it is not the beginning, either.

.x.

Barney looks up at him with blood in his mouth and a gasp on his breath. Clint has been perfect because he has had to be: now Barney cannot walk, so Clint does it for him, away, and away, and away, until he has left his skin and dust behind him, until he has broken every bone and rebuilt them as someone else.

He asks, "Do you know what it is like to be unmade?" but what he means is, _my brother is dead, and I killed him._

.x.

Clint does not become; Clint is not, and then Clint is.

.x.

In Budapest, a woman with fire-touched hair and a black dress puts her hand on his cheek and murmurs, "I have a business proposition." Clint has time. He accepts.

He is not in love with her, but with the way she moves, fluid, deadly. Natasha dances as if on aerial silks, and he cannot see her clearly through the liquid red fabric. He knows what he is in for until he doesn't, until bridges are burning and Natasha unfolds herself like a question, leg raised, arms curved above her head.

Clint hums "The Archduke Trio" and cannot look away. He has to run or be engulfed in flames, but he waits until the dance is over, and he kisses her goodbye.

.x.

The person called "Hawkeye" is no one. The person called "Hawkeye" is a costume. But Clint fills it, arrow by arrow, until he is made of sharp points and shafts that splinter. He works for circuses until people stop going to circuses, and then he lets Nick Fury write him paychecks.

"You're a survivor," Fury tells him from behind an eye patch, and Clint smile is hard when he says, "I'm a lot of things."

.x.

The ballet shoes are always pink, so he does not bother with them. It is not until SHIELD sends him to Paris that he finds them, fire-touched and silk. Nobody can wear those shoes, the saleswoman tells him; ballet is meant for beauty, and those are—too violent.

"No," Clint says, "they are just violent _enough_," and he buys them. He is not in love, but his lips had been singed when he kissed her. Natasha is made up of lies, but Clint is made up of necessity, so he hums Rachmaninov's "Rhapsody" and wonders about Russia in winter.

.x.

He is not _good_. He simply _is_.

.x.

"You must leave behind _everything_," Fury says, and Clint raises his eyebrows. He looks around the small room they have given him: table, bed, chair. Once he had been a circus roustabout; once he had been a thief; once he had been on an island while a woman made of flames danced without shoes. Now he is made of arrow-tips and splintered shafts, but he is not attached. He can shed those too, if he has to.

.x.

In Argentina, he steals a relic that glows yellow and stores it in a warehouse in a box labeled "curtains." He does not know if he finds Natasha or if she finds him, but he looks at her across too-tall grass and feels his own bones cut him.

She asks, "Still with the bows?" and he grins, and he feels whole, and he asks, "do you want to know why?"

Natasha looks at him, expressionless, and Clint feels the answer rise within him, the answer he didn't know he knew.

"They are silent," he says, but what he means is, _they are unexpected._

_._x.

This time when she dances, he feels the questions like pinpricks, but they are not for her. She dances and he becomes dislodged, the roustabout and the archer and the thief.

All of Clint's questions are for Clint, so he does not ask them. He wonders, "will you stay?" and he doesn't know what he wants to be her answer.

.x.

"Kill me," Barney begs, and when tears trip down he cheeks he cannot even raise a hand to erase them. Clint has never been a good brother, only an effective one, so he does not erase them, either.

"No," he says.

Barney closes his eyes, because he cannot move his neck to look away. "You _owe_ me this," he whispers.

"I don't," Clint says, because when you tear your own walls down and build them up again a different color, you have no debts. You cannot be something new if you are still made of something old.

His brother sighs. "Clint," he says softly, the name a reminder, "I'm not coming _back_."

"I know," Clint starts to say, until he realizes he doesn't, until he realizes there are links in his armor that are branded with the word _brother._

Barney waits, and Clint cannot be new if he is made of something old, so he sighs, so he grips the pillow with both hands.

.x.

After, he goes out, and he gets _drunk._ He gets so drunk that he forgets everything, up to and including his name, and he is not building someone new, because he has used up all his materials.

"I always knew you had a soft spot for the good guy," says Natasha, and she is in a uniform that matches his own.

He pulls the boxing gloves off of his hands. "It's not the good guy I have a soft spot for," he tells her, "it's the job security."

She laughs, and then launches at him, and he knows her too well to pull his punches. He fights with his hands and his feet and his _teeth_, he uses every dirty trick he knows, and if he happens to find an opening, he will kill her—because he will never find an opening.

He does not expect to beat Natasha, but he does not plan to make her victory easy, either.

.x.

In the dark, he hears himself whisper, "tell me something true." He does not know why; there is no shortage of truth in Clint's life.

He half-expects her to recite an equation or rattle off pi, but instead Natasha tucks her ankle between his calves and murmurs, "I was never a ballerina."

He puts his pale hand beneath her bright hair and shakes his head, unfooled. "No," he tells her, "tell me something _true._"

Natasha is quiet. This is his own victory, he thinks. "I killed my brother."

What she means is, _I killed my brother when I didn't have to_. Clint knows what it is like to be unmade, so he says, quietly, "so did I."

.x.

"My parents burned in the fire," Natasha says, "I burned in the fire too," Natasha says, and Clint hums Handel's "Water Music," not to put the flames out but to keep from being consumed.

"I burned in the fire too," Natasha says again, and Clint whispers, "No, you didn't. You were _born_ there."

.x.

There is a god on earth, and they are looking for his hammer. Coulson isn't one for personal details, but in a car in New Mexico he asks, "do you believe in God?"

Clint leans his head against the passenger seat and thinks of car crashes. "I believe in fire," he says, and realizes that he _does_.

.x.

"You were wrong," he tells the stone.

Barney's carved name doesn't answer. That's all right. Clint didn't expect it to.

He leaves a quiver and a mask and a circus program (these things are metaphors, understand) in flames on the grass. He is not good, but he is new, and that which has been unmade can be reformed into something better. He is not good—but he could be, if he chose.

.x.

"To live with wolves, you have to howl like a wolf," Natasha tells him, and Clint bears his teeth, hungry.


End file.
